


Memories of a Monster

by KatzBJ



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Borderlands: Borderlands 2, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-02-16 16:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18695545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatzBJ/pseuds/KatzBJ
Summary: Short and simple sections of memories from when Krieg was an experiment to the events of BL2.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first real work of fiction I've done in many years, but I have a lot of thoughts about Krieg so I figured I'd give it a shot. Each chapter will have a bit of time skip from the next, so there will be a sense of disconnect from one to the other. (This is also my first experience on this site so if there's formatting errors feel free to notate it thank you)

“That’s all I can do for today, I can’t push any further or we’ll end up with with another failed experiment on our hands.”

We strained to lift up our head to gauge what the verdict would be this time. Whether they would force her to go beyond the limits of our twisted body regardless of warning or get bored and move onto the next unfortunate Pandoran they scooped into their greedy hands. The few seconds of silence between the lone woman and Hyperion envoy felt unbearably heavy.

“Jack isn’t going to like this lack of progress Samuels...” There were footsteps, we still couldn’t see past the blinding veil of white that clouded our eyes.

“You better get this skaglick to go through fucking hoops by next checkup or we will terminate it.” With a clamor of armored bodies moving across the steel floor, the envoy must have turned toward the exit of the laboratory room as we heard the airtight door sharply hiss open. “Unhook it, we’re bringing in the next one. Jack will expect 032212 to have something to show for all his wasted time.”

A gentle touch behind rubber gloves grazed our body, Dr. Samuels...yes, we recognize this. She was always careful to not harm us any further than what she had to, the only one from what we can recall through faded memories who has given us kindness since you were born. You only know very little before this mass of walls and mourning, here where so many lives have been taken only for you to emerge out like some kind of parasite. My own mind is slowly dwindling down into the depths of yours, I can remember a time before where I had my own life apart from you. Vault hunting like every other better than average fool who lived on this planet, the mines… Dahl? I can’t recall. All I know is that you were no more but a nagging little tone gnawing at the bottom of my brain when the purple washed over us back then; but now, as we keep drowning further and further into the eridium you get stronger and stronger.

“I’m sorry,” a small whisper slipped out from under her thick surgical mask, we could hear another inhale, as if she was going to say more but it was steadily exhaled after a small pause. We didn’t need to see her to know that she looked tired, she always does. Blonde hair messily tied up in a short ponytail, face pale and ragged, eyebags almost weighing down her skin from lack of sleep. Who knows how she had gotten wrapped so deep into this; she was immeasurably smart, one could assume that Hyperion had simply just sought her out against her will, as was the case for many that resided in the research station.

“Such sweet soliloquy to gift upon the damned,” you ramble through a sharp inhale as our muscles tense at the needles slowly being pulled out of the layers of our skin. An attempt at a reply I could only guess, to which Samuel’s offered no further words and instead kept busy focusing at her task at hand. Even through the gargled nonsense you spit out, you understood that she was genuine in her apology as it was painfully obvious she was as trapped as we were. Eventually the last injector was carefully pulled free and the second she unlatched us from the machines, we fell limp to the floor. The envoy wasting no time lifting us and shackling our wrists before roughly tossing our body in the all to familiar transport crate.

“Mark 033112 as a no feed for a week, water every two days.”

The claustrophobic crate shook and groaned as it was pushed out almost as quickly as it was brought in, making room for the other. We could almost count the rotation of each wheel as our head lay rattling against the bottom.

_1, 2, 3…_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting to know Dr. Samuels just a little more

We've been awake for hours pacing back and forth around our cell, twitching and growling madly like an abused animal. Our body is aching and our veins burning underneath the skin like an old rotting wound. It's driving you mad... its driving me mad, I can feel our fingers rolling around, unable to scratch at the cuffs that keep our hands behind our backs. They've caught us before, clawing away at our own flesh, struggling to be free of the fire that encompasses our insides.

“Krieg?”

For the first time we stop in our tracks, we’ve been so locked in our own mind that we didn’t even hear her come up to the cell. Our gaze meets hers as we turn to face her; the outward facing wall of the cell resembling a floor to ceiling window, the heavy reinforced door being the only disruption between it and the rest of the containment area. She had a coat draped over her thin shoulders and her left arm tenderly holding onto the right sleeve like she was trying to hold a hand that wasn’t there.

It wasn't odd that she was here, Samuels tended to visit us whenever the preserve shut down for its one day of the week to cycle power. We didn’t know if she was simply just restricted to this particular wing or if something compelled her to use the time she could have had on her own for watching over the likes of us. It wasn't like we were alone here, the entire wing was specially reserved for the ones who actually made it through the wicked injections and gained the 'privilege’ to be used in whatever way Hyperion saw fit.

The quiet became unnerving to you as you gnash our teeth at her, grumbling and grinding our molars as we lumber toward the energy sealed window pane to forcefully push our forehead into it, almost as if you were trying to walk through. We squinted our eyes and waited for a response.

“They had me put down two more this week,” Samuels shifted uneasily under the coat, “Eric Franks was one of them, he arrived earlier than you. Lasted a long time...I think in the end he couldn't even recognize his own name anymore.”

Our head tilted slightly, we heard of the man though we couldn't sympathize with her obvious sense of loss for him. The subjects were not to come in contact with each other, what we knew was simply whatever we could overhear between being moved around the facility. Samuels was the only one who referred to each of us by our names rather than by number. This whole time was it simply a way for us to remember who we are? Our body twitched at the thought of trying to remember past the depths of the preserve.

Samuels' grip tightened on the sleeve of the coat, there was something she wanted to say but she looked like she wasn't sure if we were the one she wanted to tell it to. “I try to hold myself together but I was never really the strong one in the relationship,” she gave a pathetic chuckle, “truth is I miss her everyday. Every damn day I wonder if I'm really holding onto a lie that she's okay and I'm just too much of a hopeful idiot to realize that.” A screeching wail came from a cell farther away, turning her gaze elsewhere. “Look at what I'm doing to people, I'm no different than he is. She'd be disappointed that I put so many other lives below hers but I love her too much to do what she would want me to.”

“Empty holes can only fit the meat of the mother,” we push our head harder against the pane, forcing our neck to arch upward. There's nothing we could possibly say that would make actual conversation; certainly Samuels has heard enough psychotic babble to fill a dictionary, but the corners of her mouth turned up slightly at our sentence. I suppose she appreciated our attempt, at least what I tried to go for before you garbled it into incoherent words.

“There's only about 20 of you all left, I hope it stays that way until we all can get out of here.” She slowly shook her head and frowned, “only you, Raleigh, Irene and Mason are stable enough to have a chance at living a real life out there. The others...I’ll have to figure out.”

A short but vicious laugh erupted from our throat at the thought of being considered one of the 'stable’ ones in the situation. What a life we've found ourselves in. “The castle is built on the arteries of the innocent and the crowned prince of death and decay sits on his throne of meat,” we throw our head back, “FEAST WITH ME FOR THE END IS NIGH!” Our head returns to the pane with a hefty thud, splitting the skin and letting loose a thin stream of warm blood as it trickled past our unblinking eyes. We wanted to make sure she would get out of here too.

Samuels was looking back at us again, this time her eyes really locking with ours. I know both you and I felt it, that for once our words actually rung some kind of sense to someone else other than us. Her face softened and she let her grip go on the sleeve of the coat to allow herself to actually put it on.

“We'll see.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delving down into mental confusion feat. Krieg

There was a low humming emitting from the thick metal collar that they had fitted to our neck, the bass rattling lightly against our spine. The collar itself felt a little too small, most likely done on purpose to make everything just that more unbearable as the sheer size of it already rendered us unable to fully tilt our head. We rolled our shoulders back and clicked our teeth together a couple of times, the situation wasn’t as ideal as what we got on our “good” days here, but both of us were anxious for a reason. It wasn’t just us this time, every one of the other experiments left alive in the wing were brought out as well, having us line up side by side in the hall as Hyperion’s CEO strolled along to examine us.

Since arriving, we haven't actually seen the others without anything obstructing our view and honestly with how badly some of them had mutated it was hard to look away. It looked as if there were seven...no...nine of us left, one in particular who looked like they could count as two on their own from the sheer size that they had grown to and another who oddly, looked very normal in comparison to the rest of us. We craned our neck the best we could to try and get a better look at the normal one on the far end, temporarily entranced in the how and why behind their appearance. Even I remember that we all arrived at separate times so regardless on if I had seen them before now, there was no telling if it was the same individual. The only thing that snapped us out of our current fixation, even through the cacophony of snarling and heavy breathing amongst the group, was the all to familiar shouting of the Hyperion corporate.

“Congratulations bandits, _you_ have been selected as the multiple numero unos out of the wasteland scum stains that we funneled through here and that's not saying much,” the self proclaimed Handsome Jack clapped his hands together and waved them back outward as if revealing something grand. “The rules are simple, I give you a task...and you do it. So simple in fact, I'm sure any one of you dumbasses can manage it.”

We’ve seen him in person several times, however never quite this close; granted it's not like we ever really wanted to see him this close either. His voice alone was grating on our ears and the way he would move while talking was even worse, constantly waving his arms and moving his head from side to side with every single over inflection he tossed into his sentences. The man wore far too many layers of clothing, enough to make our lower eyelids twitch in discomfort when realizing half of it wasn’t even fit for the heat of Pandora. Needless to say, Jack wasn’t as well put together as he tried to make everyone believe; an observation of ours that would bring a chuckle to even you, considering our own current state of being. A man who wore a face over his own and danced around claiming to be the saviour of civilization on an uncivilized world? You’d think we were making up a tale to teach troubled children how it’s not good to be full of yourself.

There was a hard yank on one of the digistruct chains hooked to our collar, bringing our thoughts back into focus. You aggressively huffed behind the muzzle we were given, I couldn’t blame you since even having to deal with restraints so often, today was especially heavy. We had two handlers assigned to us, one standing to either side, each holding onto a seperate chain and covered head to toe in hyperion grade armor that was uncharacteristically painted in matte black. Our hands were shackled together behind our back as usual, with our legs left free to move around, a slight bit more freedom than what we observed on some of the others. We shuffled our feet around a bit, something felt wrong but we couldn't grasp our thoughts. I couldn't hear myself.

_Wring their flesh into yesterday's scraps, grind their bones for the coffee tomorrow. We've been good mommy do I get the prize? Can't wait to tear through, dig down to the succulent morsels._

The muscles in our neck started to twitch involuntarily underneath the cold steel of the collar, our heart rate was rising and a sense of panic was slowly overcoming both of our minds. This device and its humming, it all seemed to be so much louder than it was before and the vibration in our spine almost felt like it could rattle our frontal lobes loose. Yet, there was something else in it that felt, invasive...like a termite chewing away into our brain.

“Now these little fashionable marvels of technology I cooked up myself,” Jack began again, pacing left to right every couple of steps, “the only reason _why_ I think you dumbasses can manage it is simply because you’ll have no choice.” He took a moment to laugh to himself, “You see, with these you will have to follow everything I say no matter what. Fight all you want but even if you somehow miraculously manage to not finish your little mission, these guys right here will make _sure_ you won’t be coming back to your cozy little cells.” He transferred over information through an ECHO to one individual out of each set of handlers, who were quick to relay their task back to him.

_Who shouts the loudest little man?_

We couldn’t think beyond the hum now as it constricted our skull, blocking out my voice to the point where I felt like I had to shout to get through to you on the outside. You were being shifted away from my reigns further than what I would ever want, the wall of white noise stationed between the two us so vast that I could barely recognize where any of the butchered sounds came from. Our body was panting like a dog as our grasp on coherent thought slipped into the psychotic mess that the rest of Pandora was used to and still we allowed ourself to be ushered along by the handlers, taking what would be out first steps outside of the experimentation wing in god knows how long. Shuttles were idling by in what we could assume was the transit bay, some of them already slowly lifting off to whatever destination they were given. Everything was clouded over for me, what you saw or heard I can only get a thin taste of; where were we headed? I tried to roll time over for a bit, seeing if I caught any bit of information that dashed past us.

Hera? I recognized this name from a now buried memory of a time where I didn’t have to struggle with limited consciousness.

_I taste the fear implanted in ME and feel words puncture sharp into MY skin. There is no YOU there is only ME._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Suicide TW** Please be aware!

Cool air and gentle breezes brushed against our hot skin in an unfamiliar embrace, it's been a long time since we've felt the outdoors and as pleasant as the weather may have felt, there wasn't much room to enjoy it. From any angle someone could have looked at it, our being here was a far cry from anything resembling a vacation. We continued our escorted lumber through Hera's crowded alleyways, citizens glaring as they made way for us to pass by, obviously not keen on having any contact with what probably looked like yet another prisoner of this system's far too many corporate wars. You seemed too preoccupied to pay them any mind regardless and kept our eyes dead ahead, possibly still lost from this metaphorical wall slicing its way through our psyche. There were a couple of moments where I thought of fighting out of our restraints, taking our chances to get a taste of freedom for at least a little while before inevitably dying one way or another. But thoughts were hard to keep a grasp on and our obedience was involuntary, what use would it be to attempt something foolhardy on a body I couldn’t control? Then there was Samuels. A woman who could have easily just fallen under orders like many others but stood steadfast and maintained her will to keep going; I couldn’t fathom leaving her behind to face whatever may come. So what more could we do other than to trudge along like a slaved animal we were, unaware of anything beyond what orders were whipped into him.

_The dogs of war poison my meat, they bite...THEY GNAW...but I am unfit for consumption and my bones will rot through the judge’s stage at the end of the show._

At first everything seemed uneventful, a mindless blur really between all of the buildings and people. Every now and then, the handlers would stop and grind information out of someone and move on, going over the same stop and go routine for what seemed like hours. It was around dawn when we finally stopped at the door of one of several shoddily made slum homes in the outskirts of the city. From what we remembered on Pandora, the home would have probably fit in with some of the horrid shacks people tended to occupy over there. Even through our clouded senses the stench of stale, stagnant water broke through, carrying with it molded wood and rusted metal. Anyone who lived here most likely weren’t the ones who built it as it’s age was prevalent through the smell alone. Our ears picked up very faint rustling coming from within its thin walls, shortly followed with unidentifiable words spoken in hushed whispers.

“Keith Sanders, we know you’re in there!” One of the handlers yelled out, using the back of his hand to bang on the sheet metal door, “Don’t even try to pull anything because you’re either dying in there or out here!” A clanking of objects being tossed to the floor came from the other side, then silence for a couple of seconds more.

I couldn’t tell if it was our ignorance of anything outside of what was laid in front of us or the truth showing with who resided among here, but everything in that moment seemed to pause. There were neighboring buildings, one in fact that seemed to share a wall with this one, yet there wasn’t a single movement within the slums. I suppose if I had room to think about it, how sad it probably seemed to know that even with the obvious threat on his life, this man wasn’t worth enough for anyone else to put up a fight for. Maybe they were watching fearfully from the cracks in their boarded windows, trying to make sure that whoever these people are weren’t after them as well.

Maybe if we were observant we could have heard the whispers seep past the door again, frantic and pleading; but our breathing was heavy and your voice was rising. The animal you were was pacing our temples and the collar kept pulling harder at each nerve ending to fuel that aggression. Our teeth were clenched yet we were hungrily eating at the anticipation, you waited for a moment to let loose for so long.

_Sugar can’t keep the reaper away ONLY SALT CAN MAKE THE DEAD DANCE AGAIN...line my cutting board and don’t cry FOR THE BUTCHER HAS NO JUDGEMENT._

“Bastard’s still difficult all the way ‘til the end.” The handler finally turned to us after the seconds started to feel like hours, swiftly taking out the ECHO that Jack had given him to show us the holo-image of a man in Hyperion corporate uniform. We couldn’t focus much on the image as the pacing in our head started to pick up speed. “Kill Sanders in whatever way you want, we just need the disk he has on him, got it?”

There was almost no hesitation between the command and releasing us from our multitude of shackles and in that moment I felt every ounce of anger flow like blood into our twitching fingers. How sweet the idea was of grabbing our handlers and stringing them across the ground in a thin veil of red but the sting in our spine was quick to remind us that we had no say. Every single sound that we’ve ever heard seemed to be rushing into our head at once and I could only find myself isolated underneath it all, unable to be heard by you any longer as you forced your way through the door. Did you notice how many were behind it?

“THE RAZOR FALLS AND THE HARVEST CALLS,” you let out a scream through strings of saliva, body barreling toward the scrambling man, “I will prepare a feast for the mother of all AND SHE. WILL. RISE!”

Our arms swung around eagerly and knocked down anything between us and him, the crashes of glass and metal echoing through our ringing ears and rattling the back of our unblinking eyes. You were cackling wildly under each exhale; it was fun to you, to drink in every tantalizing bit of fear that graced our senses like a starving child in a room of candy. The man was desperately trying to worm his way around us in the limited space we shared and we were so focused on toying with him that we didn’t hear any of the screams behind us. Nothing else mattered, we were set on a task of murder, that’s what we had to do...and when our hand made contact with the soft skin of his neck...that’s what we wanted to do. The neck was so deliciously frail, each tendon squirming under our palm as we lifted his body to slam against the wall and drag slowly toward the floor. Our grip tightened and we began to feel the delicate ribs of the trachea combining with the pulsing of his jugular vein as the air was slowly squeezed out of him.

_[This isn’t how I want to do this.]_

You snarled and squeezed your eyelids shut for a moment to shake my voice loose from the back of your head but when you opened your eyes again it was as if you were seeing everything for the first time. This man had a face that dragged under the weight of his swollen eyes and skin stained with the tears that were running down his cheeks. You were taken aback for a second, grip loosening enough for him to draw in a shuddered breath. He wasn’t fighting back anymore, much to your disappointment. Something felt very different between now and when we had entered the shack. Did you notice that the screaming had stopped?

“Hyperion isn’t taking my life from me…” He choked out, breaking our mental search.

Our eyes ran over him for a moment, his arms were close together, left hand limply holding onto a worn utility knife that was resting over his right wrist. A guttural noise of frustration erupted from our throat and we pulled his neck forward to slam the back of his skull against the wall; the revelation bothered you. “You can’t fight the cycle of pain! You can’t close the drain that sucks out the marrow! Only I can kill you! I AM YOU!”

We didn’t know at what point the knife sawed its way through his skin, but the smell of blood hit our senses like a train. With each breath of iron that made its way into our body our heart rate rose and somewhere in you I felt a pang of emotion I couldn’t identify. You had let go of him and cupped our head in our hands, pushing against the bones of our face as you frantically ran through mental images you didn’t understand. Look at what you did...look at what we did, what were be doing? A hard stab made its way through our spine again but the message that it was trying to deliver into our brain was no longer as obvious as it was a moment ago.

“Five and seven…” I picked up the mumbled words, “they were just five and seven.”

“Shut up! SHUT UP!” You wailed loudly at the sound of his voice, taking our hand and wrapping it around his face so you couldn’t see a single bit of him staring back at you. Over and over you pulled him forward and back into the wall, the sound of bone crunching against metal slowly softening into a wet splatter. Eventually our hand couldn’t hold onto anything further and we stopped to look at the tender clumps of viscera that stuck to our skin. We let our eyelids relax and breathed in the potent smells mixed into the air. Just a corpse, a pile of flesh and bone, at least this was something you could understand.

We never paid mind to the blood scattered on the dirt outside and the body of the woman who was shot as she ran out the door. The mission was done and the stinging was calm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are curious behind Keith Sanders, he's a Hyperion employee you can get a little insight on in an ECHO log located in Opportunity. He questions Jack on if the city would actually be successful and Jack responds with killing his two kids.


	5. Chapter 5

Time really only remains relevant if you have something to signify each hour. Something small like getting out of bed for a glass of water or sitting in a specific chair can be enough to associate with a time of day. The quiet gave us room to create what we could to occupy the space, a mental clock ticking by in the distance, counting imaginary seconds to an imaginary time scale. Maybe if we focused enough we could hear the crackling of fat seeping out from a skag rotisserie over on an open flame, the heat as warm and inviting as you envision for your ‘mother’. We licked our lips at the thought of a lunch, surely it's been so long since we've entertained the idea of a conventional meal. Is this really all we had to think of?

"Crisp and succulent," you mumble out at a volume low enough that our lips didn't seem to form the words. We've been neglected since the assignments stopped coming through, ironic in a sense to phrase it as such since Hyperion was far from being an example of hospitality. Clearly the distance between meals was getting to you and as absurdly meat focused I felt that you were, I had to admit that even this was rough. There had been this cloud of inactivity within the center for a while now where the lights stayed cold throughout the day and even the sad-faced doctor herself had stopped her visits. It was frustrating in many ways for us...or I suppose more accurately, for me, that the only link I had to remember myself by had been gone long enough for my name to even slip my mind. I cannot blame it on her, but she knew me more than I could ever hope to remember and without her I might as well chalk myself up to being a growth on your back.

Most of the others in the wing had gone fairly quiet over the days, just a couple of strung out wails of frustration and the frantic sounds of finger nails trying to scratch their way through the shoddily laid concrete. There was a stench that begun worming its way through the ventilation shafts in our holding cell several days ago, one that I could only assume was that of rot given the conditions. At least through all the negatives, the darkness was a welcome change to our strained eyes and I’m sure the others shared that relief from the constant beam of laboratory fluorescence. We shook our head to refocus ourselves, causing the few sad clumps of hair we had left to feather the ground in dry black strands, "She sings no more her song of numbers to wean the BABIES OF HER PSYCHOPATHIC PURPLE PUDDING. What is a child but an OPEN VESSEL when mother isn't around to fill the GNARLED MOLD."

_You’re jumping the gun, someone as important as her they’d probably make a show out of. In any case, if this means we found ourselves a termination date: can't say it was nice knowing you._

There was an offended grunt, "YOU DIE WHEN I DIE LITTLE MAN. WE ROT THE SAME."

Honestly, my half-hearted jab most likely wasn’t that far off from the truth but in the same breath it could have very well just been another test. We've always proved to be obnoxiously hardy through anything they tossed us into, so I didn't actually have much doubt that we'd make it regardless of our empty stomach. It was really just a matter of whenever we finally outlived the uses Hyperion could find for us. Whatever they were doing couldn’t possibly last much longer and I think both you and I know that somewhere along the line we’d be put down one way or another; you can’t just let a rabid dog wander. This particular moment however felt like it wasn’t going to be the one for us though, not yet at least.

_Remember, as long as we can keep holding out, I'm not calling it quits if she's still trapped in here._

"The puppets shed their sad sodden skins into the gutter." You ramble out on your own accord as you lose interest on walking in circles, giving our legs a break as we slid our heavy body down against the cold wall to the floor. "The hands won't return to complete the second act, as the dessert table is full and it's an ENDLESS BUFFET."

_Are you even listening?_

Choosing to ignore me again, your mind daydreamed into memories of missions past, reliving the internal delight of violence. Sadistic by any other circumstance but really what else did you know? There was still a heavy barricade of black that surrounded half our brain but you passed beyond that to search for your safe little world of color. The place where you could be free to remember all the fun gory little dances you performed, an Oscar winner in your own blood covered fantasies.

_Really? This is what you're thinking of now? Are you forgetting me back here, knocking on the back of your head like a fucking postman at the door?_

We’ve always struggled with finding a common voice between us, but when thrown into chaos it became so clear; we had heard the monster we could be and listened to it drown our quarrels beneath a sea of bitter red. You pushed a grin across our dry lips, oh how sweet and clean the air tasted as the last breath seeped out of a corpse’s lungs into ours. It was an indulgence, a guilty pleasure that made everything around us stand still enough to feel real. And as much as I could question the morality of it all, I shared that with you.

"WE ARE EVEN LITTLE MAN, TWO AN ODDITY BUT A THIRD TO MAKE TWO ONE." You cackle out in a mildly surprising sense of humor, even if it's poking fun at my faults.

_Oh now you decide to listen to me again? I'm no stranger to violence, just like you.also know that I'm at least more than it...whether or not I remember, I at least know._

You snorted like a bullymong at me, as if I was standing just a few feet away, "keep talking loud, I will smother you under the layers of miasma, muzzle the yapping puppy next door." Our legs shifted around into a criss cross position as we scooted forward off the wall. "I know what I am. I am the copper rod that calls the lightning, the screeching of monsters in the night, THE JANITOR IN THE MESS HALL OF MURDER!"

_I'll be sure to put 'self-assured' on our r ésumé. _

And just like that, silence enveloped both of us as we took the time to settle into reality once more. Probably a joke in itself to suggest we would have anything resembling a life, much less to say we would ever even make it out of here to consider it. Where would we go? I guess the marauders of Pandora's wastes would give us a passing glance if we stuck around outside their camps, can't imagine we'd look like we'd have anything worth killing over. Definitely can’t get near any civilian areas; if we managed to be good on behaviour or not, the idea of being close to innocent families wasn’t reassuring. We tightened our jaw and let our back touch the wall again; maybe she'd stick with us, help us be human again. Sam...Sammy? Sammy. Sammy was her name right?

We closed our eyes and tilted our head back, would anyone really bother with us? I hadn't considered it throughout this entire time but anyone I could have known from before, there's no way for them to recognize me now. Whatever life I had was buried with my independence and there was really no going back to salvage the pieces. It was in a literal sense just ‘me, myself and I’ from here to however long that we had and will probably remain as such if nobody gave us the time of day. Desire for company wasn’t really a thought our mind; god knows that it was as far from important, but lone wolfing it didn’t feel like familiar territory to me either. In that moment I felt a light chuckle bubble through our chest as you met with me in our separate circle of thoughts.

_Well, you know, it’s all hypothetical._

"Dead air hurts to breathe," you softly respond, "Silence is the enemy of my enemy and I stand with a lit match in a room of gunpowder.”

You didn’t know how people can be, how life was when you weren’t ringing it’s neck from its body. Hell, did I know either? Memories were starting to become a privilege and it was hard to find where I ended and you began.

“Knives and needles lay in my rose bush to keep my skin from the thorns, nature does not nurture what she didn’t birth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no update. Thank you all for the kudos!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene ended up extending to a fairly decent sized chapter compared to my other ones. Next one is going to continue almost directly off of this one.

Alarms tore through our ears, jolting us awake only to immediately curl up to tuck our head between our knees in a desperate attempt to block the sound from our senses. We let out a frustrated scream, almost soundless against the blaring, as our vision focused in on the flashes of red cutting through the darkness of our cell. No telling how long we got to rest for this time around or even what time it was between now and then but whatever the amount was, we definitely needed more. Anxiously, we sat there with our gaze focused on the floor, ignoring the nerve static from our still sleeping arms wrapped behind our back. With each resonance our eyes jittered around in their sockets and the gravity twisted below. Leave it to the yellow devil to somehow make the most obscenely irritating noise in the entirety of this star system. 

Exhaling, we tightly pressed our eyelids together, taking a deep breath to try and settle our internal rush; instead ending up falling into a bed of numbing pain shooting through the layers of our skull. Needless to say we were physically shot at the moment, our lack of sleep coated our brain in a thick film of clouded thoughts and our body quaked underneath its own weight. If Hyperion's idea of another test was seeing how long we could ride out an alarm, I guess we had to just waste further away with the lovely monotone tune of a shrill electric siren to accompany us.

“Little electric hornets hiding in the sulcus, eating away at my soft meats.” Almost talking in reverse, you sucked in the air of the words slipping through the thin gaps of our gritted teeth. Sluggishly, we continuously turned our head side to side to rub our temples against our kneecaps, the firm pressure bringing minimum relief from the angry stings. Something else was eating at me other than our current migraine and I know you were probably not paying attention enough to pick it out, but I could feel it nibbling at our earlobes.

_ Stop moving for a second. Listen, do you hear anything? _

“Tiny one favors the masochistic,” you grumble, voice partially muffled with each turn, “use my spine to ring the evening bell and call me Mary.”

If I could have made an audible sound of irritation I probably would have in that moment.  _ I’m not being sarcastic you big-- just listen! I don’t think this is just for shits and giggles. _

Even with a groan of reluctance, you humored me and stopped our head at an angle were at least one ear was free from obstruction. There was a faint commotion coming from the other end of the wing; the most dominant sound seemed inhuman, a combination of a horrid low pitched scream filled with a mixture of incoherent words. Other voices gathered around it were yelling, unclear to us what the connotation of it was, but the heavy crash of electrical equipment probably meant it wasn’t playing in their favor. I think you gained interest at this point, slowing our breathing to a quieter pace in an effort to pick up what we couldn’t catch. It seemed obvious what link could be added into the chain being forged through the discord, but our expectations were low when it came to opportunities. Was it really possible that there was a breach of some kind trying to be placed under control? A scoff emitted from our throat, we doubted the possibility but I never minded being wrong.

“Stop her! She’s using 398840 as cover!”

A single shout rose out in a silence that expanded for a couple of seconds between the multitude of input, just enough for us to hear clearly. Six-digit number...how convenient considering that pattern was used mostly to identify the man-made monsters here. The right corner of our mouth turned up into a very subtle smirk, we felt a tinge of excitement click every nerve ending through our weak body and our heart rate kicking up. It wasn’t long before the bass-filled hum of a cell door slowly sliding open joined the audio circus, the heavy mechanical thud of it locking in place rumbling through the floor to our cold bare feet. A subtle sound of footsteps followed, rushing further away from where they originated only to quickly disappear under the sudden rising sound of gunfire. Our smirk slowly grew into the grin we forgot we had and we lifted our head to face the searing red lights, anticipation barring us from the sting. What are the chances that it will all turn to a head on this particular day.

Clicks emitted between the signal overhead before it broke into radio static, temporarily taking over the sound crackling from the worn speakers, "We have a break! I need all assigned handlers for the human testing facility right now! This is not a goddamned drill, I need everyone here now!"

It clicked a few more times as the microphone was placed back on it’s base, the strained engineer's voice echoing through the halls and resonating in between our inner ears. That was all the confirmation we could have asked for, almost made up for the abrupt awakening. We lowered our legs and struggled to get onto our feet in a sleep deprived wobble, squinting as we made our way to the giant energy pane on the opposite wall. Our eyes noted a couple of miniscule sparks beaming off the metal walls from bullets missing their mark but otherwise we couldn’t seem to get a good angle of the action from the relatively straight hall our cell was in, even without adding in the wavering lighting situation. Almost as if on queue, a flash of white light suddenly illuminated the halls for a sliver of a second and we instinctively turned away, our shoulders twitching in response but unable to lift our bonded arms for any further coverage from the flare. The following explosion was quick and far enough to not cause us any harm but still near enough to toss small boulders of broken concrete down the hall, one of them knocking a large dent into our cell door with resounding tang.

We almost missed the sound of yet another door opening due to the reverberation of the collision melding together with that of the mechanical. Each door felt like was going down the line and even though we had already made the assumption of us having a turn, we remained eager to hear our own unlatch. Wherever the rest of the debris flew to, it managed to cut some of the wiring to the alarm system, causing the speakers to let out a muffled variation of what it was supposed to. Instead, screams of the dying personnel filled the air at the rotation of every minute; the scent of freshly spilled blood making its way into the cycled vents and out into our cell. You growled under a breathy sigh, you were through with patience, “Bring me the slaughter! Feed me the fear and give me the tender kiss of decomposition!” 

Our fingers were curling in, ragged nails scratching at our palms as if our itch to join the onslaught was physical enough to be satiated with a stimuli. We paced back and forth like the many times we have before, this time our feet moving faster and our turning tighter. Each shot felt like it rang through our ears longer than the last, each delicious crack of bone we could make out made us clack our teeth together. Time was so agonizingly slow compared to the speed our thoughts were running at; a multitude of voices and images rushing through the buzzing in our brain. Even though we had the will, we weren’t walking straight and I could feel our shoulders hunched over with exhaustion. I didn’t expect us to get far in this situation honestly, maybe you knew it as well that we weren’t what we would have liked to be when...if this day arrived. We’ve considered it, the possibility of seeing a picturesque escape regardless of the actual plausibility multiple times. Delving into what domino effect will begin beyond this first step, we didn’t hear the other door open through our self-created daze, pausing only as it locked itself snugly into the containing wall.

“Krieg?”

I’m not sure how long we were facing each other before she spoke or if it even went in that order, but there was a definite silence for a moment where neither of us seemed sure what to approach with. She appeared frozen in mid motion, her legs slightly apart, body not quite in line with the direction of her head like she wasn't sure if she wanted to continue walking in. This frail woman spattered with blood that didn’t seem to be her own, glasses reflecting the red glare flying by and hiding her tired eyes as she stood gazing at us from the cell doorway. At some point in time we knew this figure, this voice, at least that’s what the back of our brain was telling us. Her stance softened as we stood for what seemed like too long, the background chaos quickly coming back to our ears as we remembered where we were.

“Krieg…” She walked in at a brisk but careful pace in our direction, “you remember your name right? It’s Krieg…” slowly she raised her hands up to show she was unarmed, probably making note of our steps back in confusion. “You’re...Krieg. Do you remember me?”

Head tilted, we furiously rummaged through all the words we could think of. We forgot our name? That was our name, how did we forget, it seems so obvious now that it was our name. When did we forget and who is this in front of us? I’m sure we at least knew this. Gritting our teeth, we grabbed at whatever we could hear the most clear and settled on speaking it, “Sa...SAM...Sammy?”

She seemed to recoil a bit at the name we chose, a slight tinge of disgust painting her face before she took in a light breath and gingerly nodded in response. “I’m glad you still know me,” she spoke as softly as she could possibly get away with among the disarray, “we don’t have a lot of time unfortunately to try and catch up.”

Showing us her empty hands once more, she walked closer, settling her palms on our shoulders for a brief amount of time before walking around us to tinker away at the cuffs behind our back. We've gotten so accustomed to them digging into our wrists for so long that feeling someone else brush the metal was almost startling. Our body must have tensed up into a little jump because she was quick to give us a very tender shush to remind that she meant no malice. Just like that, we felt the instances roll back to us and we remembered now that this woman was the only one we could have placed our trust in during our time here. A human being so wrongly strangled into the choking grasp of corporate domination that in our eyes she deserved our loyalty and yet somehow she slipped our mind. Your mother’s face was here again and you could see how bright she shone underneath her coat of red as she raised us from the precipice of death once more. We recollected why we had wanted to save her from this place.

It couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds before the little confirmation blip sounded and the cuffs released their hold, causing our arms to slump back into their natural place at our sides. Being able to have free reign over our own arms again was an odd feeling that we, for some reason, didn’t seem prepared for. Slowly, we raised them and took a quick glance at our hands, a single flip and back was good enough for us as we didn’t really have the time to go on a trip of self-discovery. 

“Has to feel at least a little better right?” Sammy remarked as she came back around into view, her right hand reaching up to loosely cup our left wrist as her free one retrieved something from her coat pocket. Although we didn’t turn our head, we could tell that the activity beyond our little safe room was starting to get closer by each passing second and naturally, her movements became more uneasy. Her hand lightly shook underneath ours but her face was free of any sense of anxiety, she seemed confident of what she was doing and really her strength against that fear was admirable.

“This is going to look really ridiculous, but I could only take what would fit in my pockets at the time,” her voice felt hesitant as she pulled out a small black piece of plastic and placed it into our open palm. “You recognize it? I tried to take what I could from everyone they brought in and kept it in a personal stash...it wasn’t for me...I just thought that maybe it would be nice to return someday.”

We gripped the tiny object with both of our hands, tentatively holding it on both ends with our index finger and thumb. Narrowing our eyes to just get a better look through the darkness, we noticed the little separations of plastic teeth pointing off from it. It struck a sense of familiarity in me, going further back than I can ever hope to recall but I did know at least what this object was. You seemed distraught by it somehow and mumbled so faintly that I almost didn’t hear the words. It was a comb. A very simple little pocket comb. A little piece of a life that I could no longer remember, right here in my hands.

“I’m sorry,” Sammy spoke up, breaking our concentration, “but you have to go.” She took hold of our hands once more with her own, guiding us to tuck the comb into a pocket that we didn’t know we had on our jumpsuit before stepping away. 

“I need you to go out there and run as fast and far as you possibly can,” with a quick pause, she glanced at the doorway then back to us, “and when you make it out of here I want you to keep on running.”

You and I had many thoughts spinning around, so much was turning so fast that neither of us were ready to really stop the wheel and face. Sure, we were both begging to leave, you wanted to step into the rampage of doing so and I simply just wanted to not die as an animal. Yet the thought was hindered because we wanted to see her through it as well. There was no other way to really thank her, to show that we want to repay all the little things she’s done to provide for those she had no choice but to harm. To leave without the assurance that she will too was hard to swallow.

“We won’t leave the good doctor to be battered down by the seeds of death’s flora.” We spoke as stiff-necked as we possibly could, hoping that our connotation was enough for it to not come across as random psycho babble. 

Sammy frowned a bit at our statement, “There’s one more person left that I still have to get to. I can’t just leave them and I’m not allowing you to stay with me either. I really can’t have you arguing this with me right now.” Her frown changed to a weary smile, “I’ll find you out there I promise.”

_ Shit. _

I can’t believe we didn’t think of that. Our entire time here there were always more than just us suffering through it all and to us they held no real importance. Of course she wouldn’t leave them, we weren’t even the first one she let out to begin with so how could we possibly hold her to a request so selfish? We stood here wasting her limited time holding out for security in a world rotated around volatility. This was really all we could do for her, to at least not make it difficult in the end and give her peace of mind. Begrudgingly, we headed toward the door and paused for a moment when our foot touched the metal lip that separated the floor of our cell to the outer hall. Our head turned to catch eyes with her one more time and with her nod goodbye we committed ourselves into the fray.

_ We’ll look for her too. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again thank you for all the kudos and comments. I went into this expecting nothing really!


End file.
